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Same virus both times:


JS/Downloader-AUD (Virus)


Info...

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_139961.htm

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Guys, I use Firefox for this site and I still a virus warning off and on so it is not just an IE problem.

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Exactly what Xenaguy said. Use Firefox and the Adblock add-on. It's stopped many problems I've had with this site in the past.

There is also the option of switching to lesser known browsers such as Safari or Opera. Less baddies are made for those. Don't get an IE based browser as you'll be just as vulnerable as IE is itself. Plus, there's a quick preferences option that allows you to disable java and javascript on the fly in Opera. Good stuff.

All in all, for SP, I definitely recommend what the others are saying. FireFox+Adblock=Surfing Goodness

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and NoScript. that's even more important

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Another vote for the WinHelp2002 hosts file. Since I've modified my hosts file per their instructions, no viruses from here, and most other sites don't show so many ads either.

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Good to see someone who knows how to read and follow suggestions!

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Another group has banned imagevenue pix cos they've "recently signed up with a very aggressive advertiser that a hijacker and a Trojan virus in it's advertisements."

Are you thinking of doing the same ?

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i don't know why everyone thinks firefox is the solution. but it's not. no matter what browser I've used, ie, firefox, etc, i still get this virus warning when i visit this site. ...

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i don't know why everyone thinks firefox is the solution. but it's not. no matter what browser I've used, ie, firefox, etc, i still get this virus warning when i visit this site. ...

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Okay, but in today's computer age, no matter which browser you run, it's not enough. You need (with IE) to run a 'hosts' file, updated regularly. With Firefox, you need to run 'Adblock+' and 'NoScripts' extensions. I haven't yet seen you say that you're doing that.

I read an article in the tech section of the Tampa Tribune last week, said that the latest hackers' trick is to hack the ad company's servers, and insert a small script into the ad pop-up scripts. These additional scripts send your browser (in hidden mode) to a website to download a piece of malware (trojan, virus, spyware or adware). Apparently this is happening to your computer when logging into this site.

The article went on to say that the onus is on the ad companies to secure their servers from this type of hack. I strongly disagree. I believe it is the responsibility of each user to secure his own machine. To prevent this type of attack, you MUST either run IE (or Opera) with a 'hosts' file, or firefox with blocking extensions. To do otherwise is to invite the hackers in to your machine.

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i don't know why everyone thinks firefox is the solution. but it's not. no matter what browser I've used, ie, firefox, etc, i still get this virus warning when i visit this site. ...

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Okay, but in today's computer age, no matter which browser you run, it's not enough. You need (with IE) to run a 'hosts' file, updated regularly. With Firefox, you need to run 'Adblock+' and 'NoScripts' extensions. I haven't yet seen you say that you're doing that.

I read an article in the tech section of the Tampa Tribune last week, said that the latest hackers' trick is to hack the ad company's servers, and insert a small script into the ad pop-up scripts. These additional scripts send your browser (in hidden mode) to a website to download a piece of malware (trojan, virus, spyware or adware). Apparently this is happening to your computer when logging into this site.

The article went on to say that the onus is on the ad companies to secure their servers from this type of hack. I strongly disagree. I believe it is the responsibility of each user to secure his own machine. To prevent this type of attack, you MUST either run IE (or Opera) with a 'hosts' file, or firefox with blocking extensions. To do otherwise is to invite the hackers in to your machine.

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Additionally with adblock or adblock+ get the Filterset G Updater extension so that it actually blocks some ads... Naturally you can write your own filters, but Filterset G seems to work pretty well, and saves a bunch of work.

Another source of host file entries is Spybot Search & Destroy. If you're using Spybot switch to Advanced Mode and then under Tools go to Hosts file and then click the Add Spybot S&D hosts List button - I don't know how that compares to the other hosts file mentioned above, but some people may find this easier to do...

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Another source of host file entries is Spybot Search & Destroy. If you're using Spybot switch to Advanced Mode and then under Tools go to Hosts file and then click the Add Spybot S&D hosts List button - I don't know how that compares to the other hosts file mentioned above, but some people may find this easier to do...

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That's excellent! I've been using Spybot Search & Destroy for several years now, and didn't realize it had a "hosts" file option!

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Also, in Spybot | Tools go to the IE Tweaks page and check Lock Hosts file as read-only as protection against hijackers - it can't hurt

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Folks keep saying "No Scripts," but I believe some are not understanding what this means. It means turn "JavaScript" OFF. When you get a warning for JS/virus, the JS typically stands for JavaScript. If you say you've turned JS off and those warnings still appear, then you either haven't effectively turned JS off or something is running from your temp int folder that shouldn't be.

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Folks keep saying "No Scripts," but I believe some are not understanding what this means. It means turn "JavaScript" OFF. When you get a warning for JS/virus, the JS typically stands for JavaScript. If you say you've turned JS off and those warnings still appear, then you either haven't effectively turned JS off or something is running from your temp int folder that shouldn't be.

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Add these 3 extensions to Firefox and work out how to configure them and you will kill 95% of all ads on the net.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136

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Folks keep saying "No Scripts," but I believe some are not understanding what this means. It means turn "JavaScript" OFF. When you get a warning for JS/virus, the JS typically stands for JavaScript. If you say you've turned JS off and those warnings still appear, then you either haven't effectively turned JS off or something is running from your temp int folder that shouldn't be.

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Saying "turn off java scripts" is not a good solutions. The right solution is simply to ban ImageVenue because it's the source of the problem. That's what CelebUtopia did and it makes sense.

I contacted ImageVenue about it and they said, "We didn't realize that. We'll loook into it." Then they wrote back and said they had banned the advertisers, but of course they were lying. Nothing changed. Same malignant ads are still there.

There are plenty of other good free image hosting services out there. Why not just ban them like CelebUtopia did. It'd be doing the users here a service.

It doesn't matter to me because I use a mass downloader and I have the ad sites blocked anyway, but before I had them blocked, I got hit and infected (through my anti-virus software) by Virtumundo and Vundo trojans from ImageVenue...

Anyway, just my $0.02

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I just got one with Avast from one of the ImageVenue hosts.

XenaGuy, as far as I know, of the major image hosting sites, ImageVenue is the only one that has consistently had viruses and trojans. There are tons of image hosts out there that don't have them, so banning the one that does isn't such a bad thing. I just think it hurts the site because some users will think it's this site and not the image hosts that are giving them the viruses.

The second post from FoxWatcher is what I'm talking about, "There are things running on this site that make coming here not as fun anymore."

Turning of JavaScript just isn't a viable option for me. I need it for other sites related to work (I work from home, and most of our servers at work require JavaScript). I have Avast anti-virus and it's generally pretty good, but I let it get out of date at one point and twice got viruses from ImageVenue when it happened.

With so many other non-virus infected options, why not just ban them? It doesn't make a huge difference to me one way or the other. As I said before, I do most of my image downloading with PageScavenger and I'm not going to get a virus through it.

I'm just more concerned that it leaves people with a bad impression of SP.

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I have logged on twice in the last 2 days and immediately got infected with the Exploit.JS.BO.D virus. Fortunately Bitdefender blocked it. Very sad to see this.

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My virus scan(AVG free) doesn't even trigger.
I can see the topics in the threads, but when I click/enter one I generally (90%) get a billion ads loading and then some microsoft flash "update" AND some nonsense with realplayer tries to load up..and sometimes Adobe Acrobat (the pdf reader) opens up then says the file (what file??)is corrupted and can't open.
all of this is happening at once and my computer freezes up. lately I just kill my connection with the net and wait for all of that to wash out.
any hints on what might be causing all that? cause I am kinda getting agravated with it.

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My virus scan(AVG free) doesn't even trigger.
I can see the topics in the threads, but when I click/enter one I generally (90%) get a billion ads loading and then some microsoft flash "update" AND some nonsense with realplayer tries to load up..and sometimes Adobe Acrobat (the pdf reader) opens up then says the file (what file??)is corrupted and can't open.
all of this is happening at once and my computer freezes up. lately I just kill my connection with the net and wait for all of that to wash out.
any hints on what might be causing all that? cause I am kinda getting agravated with it.

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The owners of this site want to earn money. If you don't like their methods there are 2 possibilities:
1. Don't vist SP anymore.
2. Your browser needs some add-ons like Adblock Plus and No Script or something similar. That would help not only at SP.

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Something is definitely going on with the forum. Recently I've noticed that when I go into a section, the hard drive will spin up briefly. Plus at the bottom of my browser a whole bunch of things will show. It's like it's trying to load something. But it can't. And more recently for the past week or so my anti-virus pops up about half the time I come here. Most of the time it tells me that an intrusion attempt has been blocked. But just a few minutes ago, the anti-virus popped up and at the same time my browser closed on its own. Anyway the message from my anti-virus said that a fake-scan exploit had been blocked. That was weird. It's especially unnerving since I'd like to think I've got adequate security.

edit - I've also noticed a lot more ads than usual. They're not pop-ups, just mindless ads.

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Something is definitely going on with the forum. Recently I've noticed that when I go into a section, the hard drive will spin up briefly. Plus at the bottom of my browser a whole bunch of things will show. It's like it's trying to load something. But it can't. And more recently for the past week or so my anti-virus pops up about half the time I come here. Most of the time it tells me that an intrusion attempt has been blocked. But just a few minutes ago, the anti-virus popped up and at the same time my browser closed on its own. Anyway the message from my anti-virus said that a fake-scan exploit had been blocked. That was weird. It's especially unnerving since I'd like to think I've got adequate security.

edit - I've also noticed a lot more ads than usual. They're not pop-ups, just mindless ads.

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My guess is that you have a trojan already in your system files. I've been using Firefox 2 (currently at 2.0.0.18) with the Adblock Plus add-on and have not seen an ads or pop ups at this forum ever since (almost a year and a half now since I made the switch from IE to FF).

If you use Firefox with that add-on extension, you should have no problems (atleast with this site). If you still are having problems, either it didn't install correctly or you have a trojan already that is triggering a function call to bypass the extension.

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I use IE7. Also, I'm defintely not ignoring the possibility that something found its way onto my computer. Having said that though, it's only this forum that triggers the problem. And what concerns me is that it's now happening most of the time I come here. As I said, another thing I've noticed is many more ads on here. Methinks that they are imbedded with some nasties that are occasionally getting through. I mean I have Norton Internet Security, spyware blaster and spybot and I'm still getting junk on my computer.

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I use IE7. Also, I'm defintely not ignoring the possibility that something found its way onto my computer. Having said that though, it's only this forum that triggers the problem. And what concerns me is that it's now happening most of the time I come here. As I said, another thing I've noticed is many more ads on here. Methinks that they are imbedded with some nasties that are occasionally getting through. I mean I have Norton Internet Security, spyware blaster and spybot and I'm still getting junk on my computer.

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I haven't seen an ad on this forum in over a year. Ever since imagevenue started not policing it's ads strictly and letting them get rogue I got Ad-Block Plus. Likely, here on SP they too aren't looking at the ads closely enough and some of the companies are taking advantage.

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My virus scan(AVG free) doesn't even trigger.
I can see the topics in the threads, but when I click/enter one I generally (90%) get a billion ads loading and then some microsoft flash "update" AND some nonsense with realplayer tries to load up..and sometimes Adobe Acrobat (the pdf reader) opens up then says the file (what file??)is corrupted and can't open.
all of this is happening at once and my computer freezes up. lately I just kill my connection with the net and wait for all of that to wash out.
any hints on what might be causing all that? cause I am kinda getting agravated with it.

And since I might have yall's ear (good ol Marc Antony): does anyone know a really good program (free please) that will clean out all the leftovers of a program that doesn't get nailed in the Windows Uninstall/remove programs thing? I want to do some changes on virus scan (wanna go to Avast) and spyware (got Spybot S&D) amongst other things. doesn't help when one's computer is 7 yrs old (in Jan) and hasn't had a real cleaning besides the occasional defrag/disk cleanup.

any ideas oh masters of the infoverse>
thanks in advance.
Ashen-Shugar

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